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Saturday, 31 July 2010

Ed Miliband flew into The Potteries this afternoon for a question and answer session this afternoon organised by Stoke North Labour Party. About a hundred members turned up to listen to his views on everything from gender balance in the shadow cabinet to Cameron's diplomatic gaffe on Pakistan. But was he any good? Was he convincing?

His stump speech was framed in terms of the familiar nostrums. He ably ticked all the boxes: politics can make a difference ... politics should be about more than management ... Labour needs to listen more ... the leadership election provides us with a blank page ... etc.

Ed said Labour did some things in government we should be proud of, but it didn't do enough. On the economy, he believed the party came too late to the idea of having an industrial policy. The experience of government had taught them markets alone cannot be left to create jobs because it never will in sufficient quantities, therefore the state has the responsibility to fill this gap. He also knew millions of working class people were turned off from Labour because of its chummy relationship with business. Ed acknowledged this was a less a relationship and more a case of business's lording it over the party. In a New Labourish rehtorical flourish, he said if workers can expect fairness not favours from Labour, then it should be the same for business.

Warming to his theme, he thought New Labour was an overreaction to the 1980s. The managerial style, the centralised leadership under Blair and Brown, it was all top down. The new leadership must learn to listen to its members to avoid the heavy handed mistakes of the ancien regime. This means a proper party conference with serious debate, members' input into policy making, and the inculcation of a sense that members have influence on the party's direction. Part and parcel of this is rebuilding of the trade union movement. He said he was proud to be nominated by so many unions, but thought it was a real tragedy not enough people were in them. If he was voted leader he would work with the rest of the labour movement to make them more relevant.

The meeting then moved to questions. I won't bore readers with the ins and outs of every query, but will stick to the main points.

On the coalition, he said when the Tories are in government, they behave as if they own the place. When Labour are in, they feel like squatters. But the situation now is different to the 80s. Back then Labour were relatively powerless to stop the Tories. But because Cameron governs in coalition, the LibDems are particularly vulnerable. Our job is to make them feel like an endangered species. They've got to feel as if deposing Nick Clegg is the only way to save themselves from electoral oblivion. If we are successful in keeping up this pressure, the coalition will fall.

On parliamentary selection (obviously a controversial issue in Stoke), because it demotivates members and can drive them out of the party, he was asked if he would give an undertaking to stop the imposition of candidates by the central party? Ed replied the impositions happened because the 'special rule' period had been applied for longer than usual. To avoid this happening again, CLPs need to select their candidates earlier. If MPs are going to step down, they owe their CLPs the courtesy to give them plenty of time to organise a selection process.

On the deficit, the questioner felt the Tories had enjoyed a free ride at the despatch box and they were using the debt to railroad though an ideologically-driven cuts agenda. Ed replied that when the Tories have completed their spending review in the autumn we have to be ready with an alternative to their draconian cuts. We have to challenge them on their rewrite of history: this was a crisis of the banking sector and not the public sector.

On foreign policy, though he avoided direct discussion of Iraq, Ed said that under Blair New Labour mistook the alliance with the USA as the need to agree with Bush's on everything. Britain needs to disagree with America when necessary, and also be more willing to criticise Israel for its actions (in fact, he went as far to say Britain and the EU should not upgrade its relations with Israel (whatever that means) until it has made real progress on Gaza).

As a trade unionist I was particularly interested to hear his opinions on workplace rights. I got the impression from elsewhere that Ed more or less supported the status quo. If he did hold this position, then he's recently moved on it. He believed all industrial legislation needs to be reviewed: he thought the labyrinthine rules on strike ballots were utterly absurd. He was also for union access to workplaces as of right, a strengthening of rules on unfair dismissal and redundancy, and get away from how the rest of the world views Britain: as a country that hires and fires in cavalier fashion.

Lastly, Trotskyist readers of a certain pedigree might be interested to learn Ed was fully in favour of Young Labour having more independence and the right to take its own positions on things. This is necessary if we are to build a culture where the party can trust itself, and a movement fully in touch with the concerns and struggles outside of parliament.

This meeting pleasantly surprised me. In contrast to gloomy comment on other blogs, I thought Ed Miliband's stall was solidly labourist. For example, whereas Ed Balls combines a Keynesian orientation to the economy with a near-Powellite view on immigration, Ed Miliband eloquently argued that immigration was a lightning rod for discontent. An economic programme that places jobs and house building at the core of a coherent industrial strategy would undermine the antipathy large sections of Labour voters feel toward immigrant workers. Sure, it's not the solidly socialist programme some demand as the condition for taking out Labour membership, but it's a clear social democratic break with the Third Way/neoliberal claptrap that went before.

Speaking to various folk afterwards, more than a few members said it reaffirmed their decisions to back Ed. It's fair to say he picked up some converts too. Speaking to a local leading trade unionist, he said if Ed Miliband won his (sizable) branch would join the party en masse. Of course, they should join now to help make sure he does. And again, the atmosphere was convivial, friendly, and there was plenty of time after for socialising.

Whether one supports him or not, if Ed Miliband wins the leadership contest Labour will be a more interesting, more gratifying place to be. Why not come aboard?

Friday, 30 July 2010

First up, nearly everyone who follows British politics will have heard about the brouhaha concerning the blocked Sheffield Forgemasters loan from the treasury, and Nick Clegg's despicable role in doing nothing about it. And, as Jimmy Cricket liked to say, there's more. According to this Tribune piece the Tories were told in no uncertain terms by a Sheffield-based donor to veto the Forgemasters loan. What was that, a wealthy businessman dictated a course of action to a Tory government, and the LibDem leader just sucked it up? Surely not. As Denis MacShane says in his piece, had something like this happened on Labour's watch the press would have been all over it. And its true. Remember Bernie Ecclestone? The Hinduja brothers?

Seeing as everyone else has been doing reminders ... don't forget to vote for your favourite left blogger from Stoke-on-Trent in the annual Total Politics beauty contest. Polling closes midnight tomorrow!

1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and ranks them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

While you're at it, give the worst blogs poll your votes too. At the moment right wing blogs are racing out in front!

Lastly, when did this happen?

I'm talking about the phenomena of nursery graduations. Sounds like something southern softies or yanks would be into, but no, apparently it's a worldwide thing practiced even by pre-schoolers in Stoke! I blame ZaNuLieBore.

Thursday, 29 July 2010

Nick Robinson's Five Days That Changed Britain was not the revelation-fest BBC trailers led us to believe. Predictably, it turned out to be a mix of banalities and stories that have been around the media block. I don't know what readers thought, but I was almost knocked out my chair to discover Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown "didn't get on". And my jaw hit the floor when it was revealed David Cameron thought Clegg was someone he could do business with.

Okay, I'm being a bit facetious. But I did come away with the impression the real story of the post-election negotiations between Labour, the Tories and LibDems is yet to be told.

For the LibDems, ultimately a deal with Labour couldn't be done because of Gordon: the real reason, it turned out, had more to do with Clegg's volte-face over spending cuts. The official ConDem narrative claims the LibDems changed their minds once they saw the books. In fact, as Clegg says in his interview, he had changed his mind because of the Eurozone's sovereign debt crisis. Curiously, he couldn't bring himself to mention this while the campaigning was in full swing, making his attacks on the Tories particularly hypocritical.

I was of the view the best we could have hoped for in the election, given Labour's standing in the polls, was a coalition with the LibDems. That didn't preclude Labour fighting to win. In fact, given the balance of political forces, every single vote would have strengthened its hand in any negotiated settlement. Neither was it a result I desired. But it was a sober assessment eventually borne out by the election results. So what did come as a genuine surprise was how little prepared the Labour leadership were. In his interview, Peter Mandelson said Cameron's public offer to the LibDems was met with genuine bemusement and scepticism by Brown and the rest of his team (the Dark Lord had already divined a coalition between the two was more than possible, of course). If this is true, if they did expect the LibDems to spur the Tories' advances, why weren't the leadership already preparing for serious negotiations? Asking Ed Balls and Mandelson about their first meeting with the LibDems, their admission that there was no briefing document or even a discussion beforehand damns Brown's team as criminally complacent.

It seems the prospect of a deal was more or less fluffed by Labour before negotiations begun. But it was not all the Brownites' fault. At the second formal meeting between the two parties, the LibDems dropped Clegg's cuts bombshell, a position all wings of Labour would have found unacceptable. In truth, while the voters on May 6th didn't know it (nor, for that matter, the vast majority of LibDems), the yellow party's policies were already in alignment with the Tories.

A rather softer portrait of the Tories emerges from the documentary. Apparently Cameron had originally decided to go for a minority government if the Conservatives had won over 300 seats but were short of a majority. But then, we're told he woke up on the Friday morning thinking "a coalition [with the LibDems] seemed the right thing to do." In other words, the coalition began life as a whim. This explanation of its origins were reinforced by William Hague's contribution - he said apart from some idle musing before the election, no one thought about forming a coalition. I know the Tories are not-so-affectionately known as the Stupid Party, but surely there was some hard political calculation going on.

Returning to the LibDems, Clegg, David Lyons, et al. all emphasised how accommodating they found the Conservatives. Reporting on conversations with his party's negotiators, Paddy Ashdown said they were amazed at the speed Tories were conceding key points on their brief. He paraphrased their positions as "Would you like this? We've been trying to get rid of this for some time." More evidence Cameron calculated a tie-up with the LibDems would marginalise the moonbats on the hard Tory right. What I'd like to know is just what they conceded (apart from the AV referendum) considering the coalition's programme is barely distinguishable from the Tory manifesto.

We know the rest. The Tories and LibDems tied the knot and their grotesque offspring weren't slow to materialise. They have set about dismantling what remains of the welfare state. The cold dead hands of neoliberal dogma is driving economic policy. And Nick Clegg is overseeing the sorts of constitutional gerrymandering he would have roundly denounced in the past. Of course, the Tories were always going to do this. But as Andrew Adonis points out in his interview, the LibDems chose to align themselves with a right wing agenda. So much for social liberalism.

One thing Ashdown says in Five Days That Changed Britain stands out. On the hung parliament result, he said "The electorate had invented an excruciating instrument of torture for the LibDems." Going by the policies they are now promoting, you could say they're returning the favour.

Wednesday, 28 July 2010

When the Tories said they were building a bonfire of the quangos they weren't kidding. That a number of health-related bodies were axed in Monday's cull was disappointing but not surprising. In their ideologically-driven cuts agenda if you haven't got a (narrowly-defined) economic value then you're fair game, regardless of the social value you possess.

Which makes the abolition of the UK Film Council an even more curious decision. This particular move will save the treasury a whopping £15m/year, and was probably chosen because "it's the arts" and apart from liberal/luvvie-types, no one will give a toss. But this is a stupid decision from the standpoint of building on the economic recovery AND securing tax receipts.

Since the UK Film Council was set up in 2000, some £160m of government money has been invested in film production. This money has been unevenly spread across approximately 900 pictures, which, according to the UKFC has generated £700m in worldwide box office receipts.

Of course, the total number of receipts cannot be considered the return on the government's outlay. The UKFC oversees the distribution of lottery money too, and it is very rare to find a film funded solely by this and tax monies. To borrow a phrase from other areas of government, UKFC-funded films are public/private partnerships to varying degrees.

So permit me this small *unscientific* exercise to illustrate the kinds of damage the coalition government's short sightedness is about to inflict.

Suppose all 900 films received an equal slice of public money. Of the £160m, each receives approximately £177,778 as a subsidy. If we treat this as capital, from the state's point of view profit is defined by the increased tax returns over and above the initial outlay.

The table below lists a dozen well-known films that have received UKFC financial backing of some sort, with their budgets, worldwide box office takings, and gross profits:

Film

Budget

Box office

Gross profit

St. Trinian’s

£7.11m

£12.89m

£5.78m

Happy-Go-Lucky

£1.41m

£8.77m

£6.22m

Man on Wire

£1.20m

£9.00m

£7.80m

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

£4.20m

£12.05m

£7.85m

Bend It Like Beckham

£6.00m

£50.00m

£44.00m

The Last King of Scotland

£3.16m

£25.45m

£22.29m

In the Loop

£0.61m

£1.50m

£0.88m

Streetdance 3D

£4.50m

£11.59m

£7.09m

This is England

£0.79m

£4.30m

£3.51m

The Constant Gardener

£13.90m

£45.81m

£31.91m

Gosford Park

£14.14m

£62.68m

£48.54m

This yields a total gross of £185.87m

Calculating the tax payable on this is a difficult business. The government taxes the companies that own the films, not the individual pictures themselves. Cinemas take a slice on ticket sales too. But for illustrative reasons I will suppose each film is equivalent to a discrete firm taxable at the 28% Corporation Tax rate.

Applying that rate to total gross profits gives us £52.04m that goes to the treasury. That works out as an average of £4.34m per film, or a return of £24 for every pound of taxpayers' money the UKFC invested (assuming the subsidy is constant).

There's more. Let us estimate the wage bill of these films account for 70% of their budget. Their total budget was £57.02m, of which £39.91m was expended as wages. Assuming all staff were basic income tax rate payers (which, of course they're not, but some actors and production staff are foreign nationals and/or not domiciled in Britain, they do not pay tax on earnings here - it serves as a rough equaliser), a further £7.98m makes its way back to the treasury.

That's £60m tax off just 12 films. And that's without counting the multiplier effects all this economic activity has had in terms of supply chain, VAT take, cast and crew's spending, etc.

Nor does it account for future multipliers. Take Keira Knightley, for example. Bend it Like Beckham catapulted her into the A-List and helped her become a big box office draw. Not only does the treasury benefit from the large fees she's able to command, but also the cut it gets from the stardust she's sprinkled on monsters like Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, and Love Actually. Her case shows the return on the UKFC's initial Bend It investment will pay dividends for as long as Keira makes films, and beyond. The same is true of other actors, directors, crews and studios whose pictures have received tax payers' assistance, whether they meet the short-term criteria of returning a profit to the treasury or not. As their reputations are built, so is their bankable value and with it their taxable pay. And returning to the short term, even if all the other 888 UKFC-funded films were commercial failures they too had their multiplier effects by virtue of their economic activity.

This may be an unscientific experiment, but it illustrates how the government's decision to scrap the UKFC is not just an act of artistic philistinism. It's a case of economic vandalism too.

NB All figures are taken from Box Office Mojo and individual wikipedia pages. Where the only available figures have been given in dollars, they were converted to sterling using the exchange rate pertaining at the time.

Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Always one to move with the times, I've recently got round to watching 2005's big screen adaptation of Frank Miller's Sin City. There's little point recapitulating the plot(s) of the six vignettes that make up the film, seeing as Wikipedia's already done it. But there are a few things I'd like to say about the violence.

Um, there's lots of it. The movie is stunning to look at, even when heads explode, limbs are hacked off, and a particularly vicious serial killer is castrated. As this hostile review points out, the violence is as copious as it is sadistic. One is tempted to say it's supposed to be. Frank Miller's graphic novels are a roid rage homage to 30s and 40s pulp crime fiction. It is a ménage à trois of redemptive violence, 1940s hyperreality, and a misogynistic/reductive view of women. Robert Rodriguez excuses his utterly faithful portrayal out of a desire to remain true to Miller's originals. For him Sin City was not so much an adaptation, more a translation. In other words, the artistic equivalent of "I wus only following orders, Guv".

And, as you might expect, the gendering of Sin City's violence is deeply problematic. You might argue it doesn't matter, that the film is a blow for equal opportunities as men and women alike are threatened, tortured and butchered. But the misogynistic devil's in the detail. Not only does the film begin and end with the murders of women, all the violence directed at them during the two hours inbetween is tied to sexuality.

Exhibit A: Goldie (Jaime King) shares a night of passion with Marv (Mickey Rourke). There are breast shots aplenty. Marv wakes up to find she's been murdered in a bid to fit him up.

Exhibit B: After escaping the police, Marv hooks up with his probation officer, Lucille (Carla Gugino). Not only does she parade around her flat in her knickers, we are told she's gay. Later Marv winds up in a serial killer's dungeon with a naked Lucille, and shortly after she gets machine gunned.

Exhibit E: Leader of the prostitute-controlled Old Town, Gail (Rosario Dawson) is captured and tortured by the Mob, who want to clear the women's co-op out and return it to the bad old days of pimps and violence. For good measure Dwight gives his on-off lover a slap too.

Exhibit F: Nancy (Jessica Alba) who was saved by Hartigan (Bruce Willis) in the second vignette from the clutches of a serial killer grows up to be an erotic dancer. Her would-be rapist tracks her down and starts torturing her before Hartigan saves the day again.

The linkage between sex and violence toward women is reinforced when you consider the three female characters who do not suffer physical attack. The 11 year old Nancy is abducted and threatened, but is saved. Miho (Devon Aoki) is one of the few prostitutes who wears clothes, and serves as their samurai enforcer in several slick but bloody scenes (of course, a Japanese woman must be proficient in martial arts). And lastly, Becky, the youngest and most child-like of the prostitutes (who, again, wears clothes) turns her back on her sisters and betrays Old Town to the Mob. She escapes the ensuing shoot out and having left prostitution behind, the final scene sees her share a lift with the assassin from the first scene. In contrast to the overt violence of the rest of the film, his method of killing has already been established as gentle, almost romantic.

The portrayal of women in this film doesn't send the most empowering of messages: if you're a woman and you have sex, male violence is sure to follow.

In a decade stamped by neoliberalism, big advances in biological/genetic sciences, and the mainstreaming of pornographic aesthetics, tropes and "world views", the body in culture has been objectified and reified an order of magnitude greater than the exploitation flicks of the 70s and 80s. This is a dehumanised body that's managed and dissected. It's a body for public displays of graphic sex and violence. And it's the sort of hegemonic body likely to remain at the heart of our culture for quite some time to come.

Therefore, Sin City might be zeitgeisty. It may swim with the cultural stream. And the box office takings (plus imminent sequel) suggest there's a ready audience for it. But none of this excuses its positioning of female sexuality as the source of male violence. Sin City's neither edgy or clever. It's a misogynist's wet dream.

Monday, 26 July 2010

Yes, another one. This report comes from the indefatigable Pete McLaren, truly a hero of socialist labour if his involvement in scores of failed far left unity projects are anything to go by. Personally I think initiatives of this sort are a diversion from the main task of the day, but I recognise there are comrades who will never accept the perspective that Labour remains the political centre of gravity for the organised working class. But I do wish comrades all the best as a strong and united far left might help pull Labour in a leftward direction.

Unfortunately, going from this report there are few reasons to be optimistic. Some might be thankful the larger groups - the SP and SWP - stayed away for fear of being taken over and/or annexed to their own political objectives. But if you're in the business of building a nation-wide left alternative, you cannot do it without the activists and resources they bring to the table. Another point is the attendance. I suppose it is an advance to have some community campaigns on board, even if they are led by old left time-servers. But the impression you get from Pete's report is the new Network is but a shell of an organisation unlikely to make any inroads over the coming years.

Pete McLaren opened the meeting welcoming everyone on behalf of Rugby Red Green Alliance, and asked those present to introduce themselves. He suggested Nick Long chaired, and that he took notes and compiled a report - this was agreed

After that process, Nick Long took the chair and described how this meeting had arisen. He accepted that the varying groups would have different perspectives. He was against there being any 'top down' committee. The main agenda was to share experiences and network, whilst hearing about what was going on around the country in terms of campaigning.

3.Reports from each local group/party and national organisationEach group/organization had 3 minutes to explain their role and outline their priorities/interests. These are summarised below:

Tyner and Wear - Many different groups involved, - a bottom upwards approach, fighting for socialism. The demise of the Labour Party means there is a need for a progressive banner. The problem of electoral clashes was highlighted but the group is wary of structures. The Northern Public Sector Alliance has been launched to fight the cuts.

Wigan - Local election results were positive, with a 13% average in Wigan for the left. We need a broad, pluralist, democratic, bottom upwards movement and an end to sectarianism. Nothing should be imposed.

Kidderminster - Started as a single issue party to defend their local hospital but now called Independent Community and Health Concern with seven councilors on Wyre Forest and control of Stourport Council. They had an independent MP for two parliamentary terms until this year. Their members have a wide range of political views.

Wellingborough - Started four years ago. One of their key objectives is to change the age, gender and ethnic mix of political organisations. They work with other progressive local organisations such as Hope not Hate, and are trying to re-invigorate their local TUC. They had a TUSC candidate in the General Election.

Manchester/Convention of the Left - The Convention of the Left had been established to show that there was an alternative to Labour. It had the support of the Labour Left, the CPB, Respect, the Green Party, the Green Left and a number of Socialist organisations. The CoL had organised a number of events around this year's Labour Party Conference. They were calling for bottom upwards unity to fight the cuts and they wanted an end to the 'sticking flags in the sand' mentality of the Left.

Leeds/Alliance for Green Socialism - The AGS is committed to Socialism and Environmentalism. It has 60 members in Leeds and a number of other branches. It is involved in a wide range of campaigns including elections. It wants to co-operate with other locally based groups.

Coventry and Warwickshire Socialist Alliance - Members were already campaigning against local cuts, including the closure of three fire stations in Warwickshire.

The Green Left - The Green Left had influence within the Green Party. Caroline Lucas had been elected against the trend, with her Socialist credentials. The Green Party should have been formally invited to the meeting. It was important to hold local discussions to avoid clashes. The Green Left was also active in opposing cuts.

CPGB - A national organisation, campaigning for a united Left party, based on Marxism, and were in favour of any step towards that. We need an organisation to unite the '57 varieties' and we need our own media. People need to be willing to be in the minority within a new movement, which needs to be pluralist. We need to build co-operatives and anti-cuts campaigns with a trade union orientation.

Lewisham People Before Profit - The organisation included a number of campaigning groups, all fighting against profiteers. They polled over 14,000 votes across Lewisham in May, although Labour support cut across theirs. Since the elections they had focused on fighting against the cuts and there was a general need for more trade union involvement.

Socialist Resistance - Described themselves as an eco-socialist group, which works inside Respect. Respect did generally well in the general election, averaging 13%. They were interested in any moves towards Left unity. They were in favour of a broad democratic anti-capitalist party.

Socialist Alliance - The SA endorsed today's meeting, days after it had been first suggested, because the SA has always stood for Left unity. It launched the Socialist Green Unity Coalition in 2005 to avoid election clashes and the Left Unity Liaison Committee in 2008 which now involves 15 different Left and Green Left organisations. It is a founder member of the CNWP and supported No2EU and TUSC as potential unity projects. The SA sees today's meeting as part of the process of building a new Left alternative/ party with a federal structure.

Epping Forest - Described as a community activist group. Stressed the need to swap ideas and develop local networks into a national one. They had worked hard against the BNP.

A number of observers made comments. A member of Socialist Resistance described their work in Birmingham against Academies. A member of Tyne & Wear Left Unity suggested we find ways carefully of presenting bids to area committees of the Co-op. It was suggested we set up a website and blog. A member of the SA outlined how some campaigns, including those against Immigration controls, could not just be local. The fight against the BNP had had some success In London. Wellingborough TUSC candidate Paul Crofts thought that the Socialist Party had become less sectarian, and hoped other socialist groups would follow. We needed a new Left party like Die Linke, he added.

4.Discussion on the establishment of a national network for all local/regional/national organisations, including a working title and the election of functional officersNick Long, in the Chair, suggested the establishment of a national network committee with one representative from each organisation. We need to hold the line for people who have broken from Labour. We need something tentative loose and federal - a network which will be there for the mushrooming community based anti cuts groups. The following points were made in the discussion:

* Local groups could take it in turn to organize and host meetings.

* We should have an organising committee and use a website and Facebook.

* We need to establish a purpose for coming together - it could be support and facilitation.

* We need to be as broadly based as possible.

* The network needs to enable and empower.

* The focus should be on fighting the cuts, with a national conference.

* The title needs to be positive.

* We need to be doing more than just opposing cuts, as important as that is.

* We should wait until later in the year to decide a title and elect officers.

* We need to avoid a rigid structure.

* We must be open and inclusive with defined aims.

* It would be inappropriate to have a title at this stage.

* We do need to ensure we meet again - we do need to elect people to ensure that happens.

A number of possible titles for the Network were suggested.

The following proposals were agreed:

* That the ‘People before Profit Network’ would be the interim title – agreed overwhelmingly with three votes against and three abstentions.

* That Nick Long (Lewisham PbP) and Pete McLaren (SA) continue as acting Convenors and arrange the date and venue of the next meeting.

* To set up a Web Site/Facebook site – David Manasse (TWLU) volunteered to set this up.

Sunday, 25 July 2010

One thing you'd be hard pressed to find in social science literature is the sociology of policy formation. There's plenty of material on power and the state, but there's no direct observation of political or business elites and how they make decisions. Thursday's talk at Keele's environmental politics summer school by Mike Jacobs, Gordon Brown's former special advisor on the environment, goes a little way toward plugging that gap.

His talk, titled 'The Political Economy of Government Policy Making: The View from the Inside' was a fascinating glimpse into how government operates outside the public view, and demonstrated the extent to which how incomplete present theorising about policy formation is. Traditional views in social and political theory on the state either positions it as an appendage of capital (Marxism) or the expression of successful interest groups (liberalism). Where the state is granted a certain level of autonomy against the rest of the society (however that is conceptualised), agency is usually attributed to institutions competing within the overall structure. This leaves a significant silence over the agency of the politicians: do they have no influence over the state at all? Going from his own experience, Mike said he and his colleagues certainly felt pressure but their will didn't feel anything other than free.

Using Labour's environmental/climate change policy shift from 2005 on, Mike constructs the beginnings of a model that can help explain governmental action while escaping the incomplete picture painted by existing approaches.

Before 2005-6, he claimed Labour's battery of green policies were anaemic. But then there was a discernible shift. Whatever criticisms can be made of the measures the government adopted it marked a change in how seriously it took the issue.

This new package included the 2008 Climate Change Act, which was the first piece of legislation of the sort in the world. It set a target of 80% carbon emissions reduction by 2050. As a means of achieving this, it set into motion a five-yearly system of carbon budgets. The first, which was formulated in April 2009 set a 34% emissions reduction target on 2008 figures by 2020. The target is enforced by law and requires government takes the lead. For example, each department has its own budget.

Other policies Labour initiated were an ambitious nine-fold increase in the generating capacity of renewables, accounting for 18% of total energy generation by 2020; a ban on new coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage (there are subsidies available - but this is far from an unproblematic technology); subsidised cavity wall and loft insulation for the poor (with energy companies picking up the tab); an effort to commericalise electric cars; a low carbon industrial strategy; reform of the energy supply market; and the creation of a national green investment bank. The good news from a green point of view is the coalition government are committed to these policies too.

The big problem storing up political trouble for the future, and therefore any widespread (tacit) support is the market reform. Paying for this strategy doesn't come cheap and it could see energy prices rise by about 20% by 2015 - just in time for the scheduled election!

So how and why did Labour break with what went before, especially as the normal operation of government is characterised by what Mike called 'cautious incrementalism'? This requires an understanding of the government's psychological frame of action. Its chief characteristic, he argued, is the studied avoidance of punishment. Punishment is defined by the point at which criticism reaches a nodal point and becomes damaging, resulting in a loss of support. The 10p tax fiasco of a couple of years back is one such example. Governments do expect an everyday barrage of criticism but as long as it doesn't latch onto an issue and persistently push it damage is avoided. Mike suggests therefore that governments seek out a 'normal operating sphere' not of reward, but of non-punishment. Hence governments' preference for operating cautiously. Hence governments' tendency to compromise on policies it wishes to introduce.

This psychological sphere of non-punishment is constrained/enabled by three sectors. The first is public, or, more properly, media opinion. While rejecting hypodermic models of media consumption, nevertheless the public at large pay little attention to policy debates and everyday government business. What information they do possess comes from (and, therefore, is framed by) the media. Hence politicians' pandering to the press pack and treatment of it as if they accurately reflect public thinking. The second is the ever-present shadow cast by business. Not only is it felt via the media, business often makes direct representations to government. And third, there is the circumscribed but real sphere of politicians' agency. So how did this complex of factors convert Labour to a more radical green policy agenda?

In the public/media opinion factor, there were four developments. First, the accumulation of scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change filtered through the liberal media and, crucially, the BBC. This built upon a public awareness already softened up by years of activity by the Green Party and environmentalist NGOs. Second, the NGOs presented a green policy agenda with concrete sets of proposals government could easily adapt. Third, as part of Cameron's campaign to detoxify the Tory brand in the wake of the 2005 defeat, he accepted the climate change agenda wholesale. Suddenly the Tories were taking NGOs seriously. This in turn created a pressure for the government to out-green the Tories, leading to a collapse of opposition to tackling climate change in mainstream politics. And lastly, by 2010 there was a significant constituency of voters who took green politics seriously. Downing Street strategists estimated there were 25-30 seats where this would make a crucial difference.

For business, a sufficient segment of capital has developed green commercial interests. The low carbon economy, the need to replace a third of Britain's energy generation capacity by 2020, and carbon trading all offer new market opportunities. The conversion of the CBI to green capitalism didn't hurt either. Second the famous Stern Report (commissioned by Mike at the government's behest) used the kind of economic language easily digestible by business. To illustrate, while business is largely blind to quality of life arguments and perspectives that argue the inherent value of biodiversity, it has o problem understanding that spending one per cent of GDP now will save an estimated 5-20% of GDP dealing with the effects of climate change later on.

Lastly, in the realm of political will, first there was a political pressure from other EU member states. The adoption of emissions targets across the bloc followed the lead of the EU's four big powers. As a result of its activism around the issue, Britain played a leading role in this thereby further locking in green policy at home. Second a new generation of politicians behind the green agenda were acquiring ministerial portfolios. Particularly key were the actions in office of the Miliband brothers. They were able to drive policy because the above constellation of forces favoured an abandonment of business-as-usual cautious incrementalism.

From this Mike drew number of conclusions. Given the present day balance of forces, a business case was absolutely crucial to securing a shifting of policy gears. Second, state activism was equally important. Capital is far from being intrinsically green and therefore requires incentives and compulsions with the force of law to behave in the desired fashion. Thirdly, public/media opinion has been partly driven by government action. Fourthly, the discourse employed by all key actors was (comparatively) easy for a lay audience to understand and was sufficiently convincing enough to marginalise the various species of climate change denialism. Fifth, these coalesced together to create even more room for government, i.e. it was able to widen the sphere of non-punishment by simultaneously tilting to the zeitgeist *and* pushing the envelope.

As well as providing a fascinating account of Labour's environmentalism, it opens the way for a sophisticated theorisation of government action. Not just because it's jolly well interesting from a sociological point of view, but also it's useful to know for anyone committed to progressive social change. The framework offered here can assist socialists and others in how we formulate strategy, particularly where struggles involve placing demands on the state. As the above political economy of state psychology demonstrates, absolutely key is to making sure government action happens (or doesn't happen) is to impinge on its perceived sphere of non-punishment.